Sonic redesigned to appeal to Mario fans

Recent Sonic games have been specifically designed to appeal to Nintendo gamers, SEGA has confessed.

Takashi Iizuka, producer of the impending Sonic Colours, told IGN, "From a general game design perspective, in recent years we've been able to introduce Sonic to new fans - a lot of the Nintendo/Mario fans - and because of that, we've made changes to the design.

"We've designed things in Sonic Colours that we think will really appeal to people who are unfamiliar with the Sonic brand and the Sonic gameplay. So from that perspective we hope that fans of Mario will really be able to enjoy playing as Sonic in Sonic Colours."

Earlier this month, SEGA also admitted to tweaking the brand to appeal to gamers who like, well, good games. It's removing all recent Sonic games with low Metacritic scores from store shelves.

Sonic Colours sprints onto DS and Wii on 12th November. Eurogamer's Keza MacDonald went hands-on in June and came away cautiously optimistic that the blue blur was getting back on track.

Before that though, you can see if SEGA's talisman can recapture his mid-'90s heyday in Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 on PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade and WiiWare. It's due out later this week.